My name is Dave Stancliff. Walk down the road of life with me each day for news, opinions, and slices of my life. Be prepared for honesty and humor. I believe in sharing, and the power of love!

Thursday, March 29, 2012

To sleep…to dream…and to have odd sleep disorders

Good Day Humboldt County!

In the course of our lives we have to step off off our daily path, and get some sleep.

When I was young (grade school), I walked in my sleep a lot. I also talked in my sleep, usually relating the day’s events to an unseen listener.

I know this because there was a listener, my Mother, who would check in on me at night and tell me about what I said the next day. As you can imagine this bothered me. I talked about everything! Luckily this period of my life didn’t last long or it would have gone harder on me as I was confessing things like gambling - throwing dice in the boys bathroom or pitching pennies!

Because of my PTSD, and the nightmares I battle with, I take a large dose of Trazodone before bed to knock myself out. The result: No dreams, or nightmares. I generally wake up rested after five or six hours sleep and I’m ready to go for the day.

I feel pretty lucky that I’m able to get that deep sleep these days. There was a time it wasn’t possible. For years after I came back from Vietnam I couldn’t sleep more than an hour or two because I was always on the alert. Those were hard years where I didn’t get any help for my condition.

Enough about me though! Here’s eight sleep disorders that will leave you happy that you don’t have them!

Sleep Paralysis: people who become immobile even after they are awake:

During REM sleep, dream activity revs up and the voluntary muscles of the body become immobile. This temporary paralysis keeps us from acting out our dreams and hurting ourselves. Sometimes, though, the paralysis persists even after the person wakes up. "You know you're awake and you want to move," Kline said, "but you just can't." Even worse, sleep paralysis often coincides with hallucinations. In one 1999 study published in the Journal of Sleep Research, 75 percent of college students who'd experienced sleep paralysis reported simultaneous hallucinations. And these hallucinations, when they occur with sleep paralysis, are no picnic; people commonly report sensing an evil presence, along with a feeling of being crushed or choked. That sensation has given sleep paralysis a place in folklore worldwide. Newfoundlanders know it as the "Old Hag." In China, it's the "ghost pressing down on you." And in Mexico, it's known as the idiom "subirse el muerto," or "the dead climb on top of you." Even today, some researchers suspect that tales of alien abduction may be explained by episodes of sleep paralysis. (Link)